All The Items Found In Ed Gein's House

The third season of Netflix’s Monster crime anthology series, The Ed Gein Story, is undoubtedly the most unnerving entry of the franchise. Chronicling the visceral acts of violence committed by the infamous Ghoul of Plainfield during the 50s, the series doesn’t pull punches in showcasing the depth of human degeneration when morals and ethics are off limits. Especially the depiction of the inner recesses of Gein’s house, the horrors it harbored in the form of his perverse collection of human body parts, is bound to make viewers sick in their stomachs. Ed Gein’s house and his collection acted as a major inspiration for the set design of the cult classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but as the series captures the reality of it, you are bound to admit that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Spoilers Ahead

In suspicion of Ed Gein’s connection to the mysterious disappearance of hardware store owner Bernice Worden, her son Deputy Frank Worden and Sheriff Art Schley visited his place. It was not the first time that an otherwise meek, withdrawn Ed got his name involved with inexplicable disappearances around the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, as previously the investigators questioned him after local tavern owner Mary Hogan went missing. Back then Ed was cleared off of the list of suspects, but this time, Art and Frank entered his house to thoroughly investigate. Nothing could have prepared them for the abominable sight of lampshades, furniture, chairs, full-body suits, and several full-face masks fashioned out of human skin. Flayed, dismembered cadavers; human skull cups; forks and spoons made out of human bones; fingernails; preserved organs; and female genitalia, all of which were part of Ed’s collection. At one point it was also suspected that Ed might have been a cannibal as well, given the cops found a human heart inside a boiling saucepan in his kitchen and entrails and disemboweled human remains were found stashed aside. It should be mentioned that Ed gathered the majority of his collection from exhumed corpses he brought from several graveyards. The horrors didn’t end there, as Art and Frank came across the horrid sight of Bernice, decapitated, dismembered, and ‘carved’ like a big game hunt. Thanksgiving was just around the corner, and it seemed Ed’s crude sense of humor manifested through the torment he subjected Bernice to. Bernice’s severed head was found stored inside one of Ed’s sacks. Also, it was later revealed that the heart belonged to Bernice as well. 

Apart from the nightmarish spectacle of human remains adorning the hellscape, a number of pulpy erotic horror magazines and perverse comics of horrendous depictions of Jew torture and subjugation orchestrated by Nazi war criminal Ilse Koch were found inside Ed’s house. Among other things, these were the major inspiration for Ed to replicate the horrors he witnessed in the photographs in the graphic details of comic panels. The majority of his victims—exhumed corpses and people he killed—were women. 

The nature of Ed Gein’s crime made it abundantly clear that he dehumanized his victims, majorly women, beyond comprehension, and the core reason behind this was the way his worldview was shaped since a young age. Ed’s mother, Augusta, a religious fanatic, was tormented by her abusive, drunkard of a husband, and her self-hatred for having to settle with a person like him affected her worldview. She considered women as promiscuous and physical relationships as a cardinal sin and inculcated her sons, Henry and Edward, with her terrible teachings. Ed felt himself attracted by what his mother considered taboo, and his fixation with the female body took shape in his cross-dressing habits. Ed had developed an Oedipal connection with his mother, the only female presence in his life up to his adulthood, and after her demise, his schizophrenic mind wanted to keep her alive by preserving a corpse he exhumed. By fashioning a bodysuit out of female corpses, he wanted to literally assume the role of his mother and keep her alive through himself. Augusta’s lifelong disdain for his son also prompted Ed to seek fulfillment by turning himself into his mother.

In the series’ version of Ed’s life, Adeline’s toxic influence played a part in Ed’s psychological descent as well. She introduced him to the grotesque visuals of horrendous tortures Jews were subjected to at the hands of Nazis and glamorized, sensational depictions of war criminals like Ilse Koch. Having seen the worst potential of humanity, Ed wanted to replicate it through his handiworks and found a chance to use it to fulfill his dark ambitions. All of Ed’s sinister collection was destroyed by forensics, and his possessions, which were auctioned after his incarceration, also met the same fate after an arson incident burned down his family home. Fortunately, the house of horror could not be exploited for capitalistic agendas in later years, although it still continues to inspire sensational accounts across different media forms to date.